head in hands
by the blanket
Summary: LeeIno. Minor SasuSaku. AU. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe the mask she’d been wearing had taken, had pressed itself so cleanly against her skin that neither of them had noticed when it had become her face. Maybe it had been over before it had even begun.
1. bent in, with eyes wide

**title:** head in hands  
**pairing: **_LeeIno_—please give it a chance. I hope that the comments I do get, are not constrained to just quibbles over my "wrongness", or the "wrongness" of this pairing. And of course, the requisite sprinkles of _SasuSaku_, because I can't help myself.**  
for:** written for Pinaface's birthday, and (later) as an answer to one of Annie's prompts. :)**  
summary: **He wondered if perhaps he was in over his head—wondered when exactly he had stopped caring.

**notes: **Very short piece. I can't see it going past five chapters.

**disclaimer: **Not mine!

* * *

Yamanaka Ino flicked a white-gold lock of hair away from her face, and leaned in so that she was almost nose-to-page with the book in front of her. Her shoulders were curled in, almost protectively, blocking the text from any prying eyes. It wouldn't do for anyone to catch the Head Cheerleader // Homecoming Queen // Most Likely to Be a Trophy Wife doing something as plebian as...reading.

Ino shuddered at the thought, and her pink mouth pursed into a small frown, the line of her lips drawing inward so they were more curved than straight. It was that Sakura's fault, she thought, half-exasperated, half-amused. It had been her well-meaning best friend who had flicked her eyes dismissively over Ino's birthday wish-list - make-up, and leather, and two different types of lace - and told her (with that Look in her eyes that _never _led to anything good) that she'd be getting Ino something_ "entirely a world away from your usual tripe, Ino-pig. And you'll thank me for it - mark my words!"_

When she'd opened the package from Sakura - cunningly masked by miles of white tissue with the double C logo, and spritzed with No. 5 - and found a tome of seven volumes that were _each_ bigger than her head, she'd turned a twitching face to her laughing best friend.

_"Not that I'm not grateful_," she now remembered saying, _"but I'm not grateful_. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone? _What _is _this?"_

Sakura had cocked her head to the side, grinning a little at the frustration Ino was sure she'd had painted on her face.

_"_That, _my dear-hearted little piggy, that's your newest obsession."_

_Sometimes_, Ino thought idly as she flipped to the next page, _sometimes, it was so very _annoying _being best friends with a genius._

-

He tried very hard not to whistle as he made his way through the quiet annals of the Renaissance section in the library. It wouldn't do to disturb the other students who were working diligently at their various projects - he remembered how strict the teachers here were from his own youthful days as a student in The Konoha Academy of Arts & Sciences. His own mentor - whom he'd seen not only moments before - had been in the middle of assigning the end-of-term project to the first years when he'd knocked on the door to his classroom.

The memories seemed to play against a silent backdrop in the theater of his mind - days he'd whiled away, reading book after book on the philosophy behind martial arts after Kendo, so he could absorb the theory, as well as the practice. He'd read the biography of heroes - and he had many - marveling at the small ways they'd changed themselves in their youth, as though they'd known of the burdens they would later carry as men. Then, there were days for leisure, where he read science fiction and discovered that even masses of words had soul, when put in the hands of the right artist. The library had been second only to the track behind the school, when it came to sanctuaries. Its quiet green glow, and the smell of books had never failed to calm him after a day of vigor.

He stopped in his tracks, eyes widening at the picture before him. Almost distantly, he felt his cheeks warm - he was blushing.

A girl was hunched over - if she let him, he'd tell her the value of good posture one day - a book, her blonde hair spilling over her thin limbs. Her small mouth was moving quickly, and he assumed she was reading along silently with the words in front of her. What caught him, though, was the movement in her thin - everything about her seemed fragile, delicate, not quite-whole - blonde brows.

They arched one moment, and he wondered if she was aggravated, what, with the way she was rolling her eyes. Her smooth white brow was furrowed, but in the next instant, it smoothed out, and she nodded a little, as though in agreement with some invisible man before her. The thin arches receded - she was calm again. Then, they quirked, one after the other, and this time with amusement. She smiled with restraint - not too wide, as though there were some old bluestocking from finishing school standing beside her, ready to reprimand her at the slightest expression beyond cool disdain - her tongue poking out between her thin lips, as though she were afraid of happiness.

He stood there, watching - taking her in. It was difficult not to feel like the worst sort of voyeur, but something in him would not allow him to move.

That was, until, she decided to call out to him. Her voice was soft, but rang true with clarity.

"You can come out now," she said, not taking her eyes away from the page in front of her. "I know you're there. But I should tell you, stranger, that my best friend's a black-belt, who taught me how to punch. So, I wouldn't take me lightly."

He tried very hard not to chuckle - it wouldn't do to show disrespect to an opponent, and really, he thought, she had every right to be upset. He _had_, in a sense, been spying on her.

Slightly chagrined at the realization, he stepped out from behind his hiding place near library shelf number one-hundred-and-twenty-eight.

He cleared his throat, and smiled sheepishly.

"Hello," he ventured unsurely, suddenly wishing he hadn't worn his deep-green sweater vest. It was hot enough with the white dress shirt he was wearing as a concession to the autumn chill.

Her blue eyes narrowed, and she didn't reply.

"What's your name? I figure that since you've spent the better part of - here, she checked her watch - thirty minutes (_had it really been that long_, he wondered) ogling my unsuspecting person, you can either tell me, or take me out to get some coffee. I could do with a bit of warming up, and," she didn't neglect to remind him again. "You owe me."

Unbidden, he felt his lips quirk up into a small smile. _This girl..._

"What are you staring for, creeper? Let's go!"

* * *

More coming.


	2. what she said

**title:** head in hands**  
pairing: **_LeeIno_—please give it a chance. I hope that the comments I do get, are not constrained to just quibbles over my "wrongness". And of course, the requisite sprinkles of _SasuSaku_, because I can't help myself.  
**for:** written for Pinaface's birthday, and (later) as an answer to one of Annie's prompts. :)**  
summary: **He wondered if perhaps he was in over his head—wondered when exactly he had stopped caring.

**notes:** Oy vey. I hate drama.

**disclaimer: **Not mine!

* * *

His name was Rock Lee. He was a first-year student at Konoha Daigaku, drove a forest green Volvo xc90, and was entirely devoted to ten different philosophies of life (had, in fact, studied them each extensively and was working on the eleventh). He was Pre-law with a minor in Philosophy, had never had a girlfriend, didn't believe in credit cards, and preferred de-caffeinated coffee to regular coffee.

In short, he was everything she did not want in a man - law school ambitions notwithstanding - and yet, she found herself gravitating toward him week-after-week since that first meeting in the library.

He was refreshing to her in a way she had trouble putting into words - something like water after an eternity in a desert, but not nearly that trite. Lee laughed so freely, admired so openly—he even disagreed with her on occasion, she remembered now, sitting in the comfort of her lavender scented bedspread.

She remembered the argument they'd had, after she'd reached the end of the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, remembered the feeling of betrayal she'd had when she read the words that ended one wizened old wizard.

Ino remembered most keenly, the way she'd attempted to shake it off, angry that the emotions stayed with her long after she'd put the book away. They were _fictional characters—_masses of words. There was no reason they should have hurt her so much.

But, they had, and he had understood.

Lee hadn't once laughed, when she met him at their—_and when did I start grouping the two of us together_, Ino wondered—coffee shop between Birch and Main for their weekly discussion, they'd spent the whole time arguing over one Severus Snape's motivations for ending the life of the man who'd given _him_ a new one.

Or, as Lee put it, they had "debated the factors which contributed to the culpability of one Severus Snape in the alleged homicide of one Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore on the night of…"

And then he had trailed off, as they both realized that they'd never really taken the time to make a chronology of events.

_"That's unacceptable,"_ Lee had said solemnly, as though the neglect had been a personal slight. _"We will start next week."_

And, she thought, looking at the crinkled piece of white-brown paper—stained with coffee in their collective zeal—they had.

He was open in a way she'd never seen before - everyone she'd ever known put on airs. She'd done it herself, once or twice, or so she supposed. Contrary to popular belief, Yamanaka Ino didn't spend all _that_ _much _time thinking about the way she appeared to other people—though she certainly did it more than most, she conceded.

Ino had acknowledged (and had long accepted) that she'd been given her identity long ago - at the age of three, at the very moment that the first tiara out of a dozen touched the crown of her white-blonde head. She was beautiful - that wasn't vanity, it was fact. Ino was a smart girl - she knew what came with the territory. Her reading materials were limited to _Vogue_, _Elle_, and the Paris portfolios, and her topics of conversation generally revolved around the cutest boys, the newest fashions, or the longest-lasting liquid liner. Even when Sakura had given her the book collection, she'd probably thought that Ino would use it to level up her night stand, or even out her wobbly jewelry cases (and Ino had yet to inform her otherwise - it wouldn't do for that monstrous forehead to expand with any more ego; that gorgeous monochromatic boyfriend of hers was enough ammo, really).

Lee was so grounded, so unbearably solid. He smiled, but with gravity. Ino wondered whether that was something one acquired when one arrived at university, wondered whether tired beauty queens were allowed even a small portion. When she was around him, she felt very much like air in comparison - weightless and light and lacking in substance. She hated that - hated that he made her feel so outside of herself, so awkward in a way she thought she'd never have to be.

One day, when they were standing on line - behind a waif with asymmetrical red hair, and a loud blond boy that Ino tried very hard not to identify with - Lee had asked what she wanted. She'd quirked a brow and replied in the way she'd done for the past three weeks:

_"A Tall Caramel Machiatto with no whip, and frothy skim - what I've gotten the last three times we were here."_

He had smiled indulgently, as though she were a particularly slow child whose company he'd come to know more intimately than his own - one whose inadequacies he'd long since come to terms with.

_"I know that," Lee had replied_ _patiently_._ He looked at her with a thoroughness that made her uneasy, as though she'd laid herself bare for his judgment. "You have never asked for anything different. Maybe I should not, either."_

With those cryptic words, he'd turned away, skillfully maneuvering the conversation to other topics. She couldn't forget, though - couldn't help but wonder what he'd meant by those words; why she'd felt so inexplicably disappointed, instead of angry at what she knew was his unintentional condescension.

In his own unassuming, unobtrusive way, he'd made himself a fixture in her life. She found herself telling him about the way she hated it when her apples browned mere moments after she'd cut them into quarter-inch slices (the tip he'd given her about the lemon juice had been invaluable), about the way she preferred her stationery be embroidered with blue lace instead of white (she'd laughed when he asked if it was because white was so much easier to dirty - silly boy), about the way she sometimes hated not being able to raise her hand in British Literature because everyone else would raise their brows.

Ino found herself hating a lot of things around him, but tried not to blame him for it.

When she told him about her issues, she noticed that unlike Sakura who would hasten to reassure, or Shikamaru who would reluctantly try to solve, Lee only watched her with that impenetrable stare, his strange, doll-like eyes solemn, and unblinking. He didn't speak until she did, only handing her napkins to mop up the messes she inevitably made with her shaking hands. He was a steady presence in her life, despite his vitality, and she had the sinking feeling that he knew her better than most anyone else - a sad truth, considering how long she'd known most of the people in her life.

Around her, the gray stones were blanketed with white, and over the river, the skyscrapers were painted a distant gray. In a few months, it would be spring again.

She fell back against her bed, and closed her eyes.

-

It was on the fifty-fourth morning of their short acquaintance that Lee turned to her, a strange calmness in his eyes that betrayed nothing of what he could have been feeling, and said, with a voice possessed of all the surety Ino was sure he had,

"I am in love with you."

* * *

Lee will have his say in the next chapter.

To everyone reading—and for those who took the time to give me a few thoughts—thank you so much for giving this a chance. :)

I'd especially like to thank **vikkaayBYAH** for her encouragement. You flatter me, and that's really not good for my ego. Or, really, for anyone else, as all it does is make me preen.

'Til next time, all!


	3. what he said

**title:** head in hands**  
pairing: **_LeeIno_. Negligible amounts of _SasuSaku_, because I can't help myself.**  
for:** written for Pinaface's birthday, and (later) as an answer to one of Annie's prompts. :)**  
summary: **He wondered if perhaps he was in over his head—wondered when exactly he had stopped caring.

**notes: **The response I've been getting really makes me happy. You can't tell, because I have this vendetta against exclamation marks, but I am really really happy, so thank you all very much for that. :)

My characterization of these two seems to also be a theme in the lovely reviews that I've gotten for this piece. I've made Lee not so flowery, and I've probably overemphasized the stereotypes that one necessarily associates with the kind of person Ino appears to be at face-value. In general, I think I have a tendency to "underwrite" their personalities, which does them a disservice—I will try to do better next time, but it's hard teaching an old doggie new tricks.

Finally, as I have said earlier, I'm so glad you guys are giving this a chance, and that apparently, some of you are even considering the possibility of shipping LeeIno. That was definitely an unforeseen effect, but more power to you—I certainly am not one to stop the crack. XD

**disclaimer: **Not mine!

* * *

Lee had always been one for grand gestures.

His father had always told him that when it came to women—or, Life in general—real men said what they needed to say, and spared no expense to say it. _"There is no honor in dishonesty, and pride isn't ever enough to keep you warm at night, no matter what those so-called macho men say,"_ he had rumbled. _"And the rewards are always a bit sweeter after they've been fought for. Nothing easy is ever really worth it."_

It was an odd reworking of a rather trite sentiment. Lee had heard the clichés, after all—had turned them over and over in the confines of his mind until the syllables broke apart into sounds and letters. The strength of his father's declaration had only grown when his high school mentor, the inimitable Gai-sensei, had echoed the sentiments one day after track practice, out of the blue, while Lee had been waiting for the sweat to cool on his body—though, he had done it in that rambling, long-winded way that Lee still remembered with fondness.

_"When you're young,"_ Gai had said wisely, _"your heart is a house with open doors. Yours is probably Victorian, young Lee—something with character, you know. Anyway, some people come in for a while, look around, and decide that they don't much want to stay—green isn't _everyone's _color, you see, though I don't understand anyone who wouldn't love a shade so vibrant. But, I digress. Other people, you throw out because they forget to take off their shoes. They'll step all over you in small ways, so insidiously that you don't notice until they've left holes where they stayed. You can rebuild, you know, but every little bit counts, and the new structure is never quite the same. But, with everyone that makes it past your doors, the opening gets a little narrower—the doorway, a little smaller. You build locks, Lee. You close those doors."_

He'd looked so very _sad_, Lee remembered now, so much older than he had ever been. It had seemed almost disrespectful to watch such a normally animated man look so very staid—something like intruding on a moment that seemed far too intimate, even for a self-appointed protégé.

Gai-sensei had shaken himself out of his daze and continued, his voice somehow more distant, as though Lee's presence had been forgotten entirely, and he was only speaking to the wind.

_"That's the biggest mistake you'll ever make."_

Gai-sensei said nothing further after the fact, but Lee filled in the gaps on his own.

As for himself, Lee didn't think that he'd quite built those locks, wondered now, if he should have. He'd certainly been given enough reason to, in the past.

He wasn't an idiot. He knew what he was to other people—an awkward, socially inept, enthusiastic fool of a man who was dangerously idealistic, and foolishly optimistic. _"__There's a line between idealism and idiocy and you've long since crossed over,"_ his father mourned. _"You've got too much heart. You're too open. You've set yourself no limits."_

Somehow, Lee couldn't find it in himself to call those flaws.

-

Ino had not been the first.

The first had been a brown-haired girl named Mayu in the fall of his thirteenth year. The first time he'd seen her, she was wearing pink, as so many girls in that stage seemed wont to do. He'd looked at her, and felt the strangest sensation in his stomach. (Later, after he'd heard the line, he decided that butterflies didn't quite describe it. He thought maybe fireflies were a more apt description—it was more sporadic bursts warmth, than any constant sort of fluttering.)

When he'd surprised her with flowers later in the day, she'd looked at him—but hadn't really seen him, he now decided—in an appraising sort of way, and smiled thinly.

_"You're not my type," _she had said. _"Your eyebrows are too thick, you aren't on our basketball team, and track is for losers. I don't date losers"_

At least, she'd been honest. He'd thanked her, anyway—had wilted a little, but when she moved away the following year, the small ache went with her.

As the years went by, he'd grown bolder—had embellished. There were offers for an afternoon of hot-air ballooning, or midnight picnics at the nearby park, mingled in with the more conventional dinner-and-movie combinations. He'd gone on a few dates—had tried not to be so irrationally angry with the ones who'd said _yes _out of some misguided sense of pity, had enjoyed himself thoroughly with the ones who cared enough to know him.

He was a chronic romantic—he knew that now, as well as he knew the signs. It was different for everyone, he knew, but if anyone asked him—and no one ever did, though he hoped Ino would one day soon—he'd tell them about the wind.

As much as he abhorred the idea of clichés, he could not find much fault in that particular one. For him, falling was as simple as breathing, and the wind at the top of the precipice was one of the best parts.

-

Their coffee shop meetings had been a new experience.

The first time they'd gone, after that meeting in the library, he'd realized the peril of being so very open. Somehow, it had been more intimate, sitting in the small booth across from her, with nothing between them but an arm's length of cherry-dark wood. The first time they'd come in, he'd felt as bare as the tabletop, naked without proclamations to cover his pride. She'd been looking at him in that moment, and only him. He'd said nothing to her beyond the apology she'd demanded, his fingertips drumming a muffled, half-hearted rhythm on the white paper napkin underneath his saucer.

He'd thought chatter would help, so he'd filled the air with it—garbled syllables, and burbles of laughter, muttered pleasantries and the odd exclamation. It wasn't until he'd noticed the way her eyes had stopped focusing, that he realized her love of quiet.

It was strange to see someone composed of such brightness, such vibrancy—her colors seemed to teem with a life of their own, what with the way her hair flashed white in sunlight, and her eyes darkened when confronted with shadows—so enamored with the sound of steady breathing.

"Why were you staring," she'd asked suddenly. "I mean, with those eyebrows of yours, you must have gotten your fair share of looks. You must know how uncomfortable that makes people feel. Don't you have any sense of the social graces, at all?"

Lee had stared—he'd never before been confronted with such honesty, and he'd wondered whether she was as open with everyone, or whether such guilelessness only came in the face of breached decorum.

He'd responded in kind, determined to repay her with more than just the coffee she'd claimed.

"I…I couldn't look away."

She'd stared at him, squinting a little.

"Your face…you know, I've never met anyone who held true to the cliché, but…your face really does read like a book. I only just met you, and—you're just, very open," she finished awkwardly, looking uncomfortable at the words.

_I think I could change for her_, he'd thought irrationally. _Silly_, he thought immediately after. _We've only just met._

_-_

He'd always been the sort of boy who knew what he wanted—had never once, floundered in the route to his decisions. When he was younger, he'd geared that endless drive toward getting his turtle-green tricycle, and his favorite white kite. As he grew older, his interests changed, but his methods stayed tried and impossibly true.

Even now, where it mattered, he knew where he stood—knew where he wanted to stand, if she would ever let him.

"I would change for her," he said now, aloud, as he laced up his running shoes and prepared to meet her at the park near the riverside. He took a quick glace outside, through the looking glass, and saw the white flakes falling despite the soft rays of sunlight.

"I would change for her," he said again.

Still, a small part of him hoped he wouldn't have to.

-

They'd walked along the riverfront, not speaking. The sky had calmed into a balmy gray, the ground around them covered with a small blanket of white. In her hands, she held one half-eaten blueberry muffin, and an old novel he'd gotten for her at a nearby used bookshop—_"They have character,_" he'd said, and she'd been thinking too deeply to argue.

_Grand gestures,_ he thought fleetingly, as he turned to her with a quiet solemnity.

"I am in love with you."

* * *

Lee thinks a lot. He's also a lot more garbled than Ino is.

In my mind, Lee is the sort of person who falls in love the way people do in a movie. I mean, he took one look at Sakura and sort of…flailed. And spouted hearts. This Lee does sort of the same thing. As you can see, the love for "grand gestures" is still, very clearly there—it's just a bit quieter, is all. :)

More soon!


	4. enough now, enough

**title:** head in hands**  
pairing: **_LeeIno_.**  
for:** written for Pinaface's birthday, and (later) as an answer to one of Annie's prompts. :)

**summary: **He wondered if perhaps he was in over his head—wondered when exactly he had stopped caring.

**notes: **Back! It's ridiculous—my passion for SasuSaku clearly outranks any crack pairing my tattered mind comes up with, and yet, here I sit, updating this in the midst of _cherry apple wine_'s incompleteness.

Sigh.

And, I got three questions that I would like to address. First, **a thousand cranes **raised a question that I respectfully wish to address—specifically the meeting of Lee and Sakura, and Sasuke's reaction to it. Quite honestly, I wrote this story never planning that the two would meet. I'm sorry if you're disappointed by this. :/ To be frank, I don't feel that it's necessary to the plot of the story that the two ever meet. And while I adore a jealous Sasuke right along with you, he won't be appearing—as blasphemous as this might be to those readers who know me for my SasuSaku obsession, Sasucakes doesn't much figure here. He exists in this piece only as Sakura's boyfriend. Further, I am of the opinion that when Lee falls, he falls hard, and even if he were to meet Sakura in this story, it wouldn't matter—in the context of this piece, it is _Ino_ who holds his interest.

Above all, this story is about Lee and Ino—Sasuke and Sakura are peripheral figures (really, I don't even mention darling Sasucakes by _name _XD) though I suppose that you could argue that Sakura was the accidental matchmaker.

Despite this, I hope you—and everyone else who has been kind enough to give this piece a second glance—stick around for the rest of the story. It's coming to a close fairly soon. :)

The second question came from **Coco Minu **way back in the second chapter. Yes, indeed, I did intend those two customers in the coffeeshop to be Karin and Naruto, mostly because I love sort-of cameos. Snaps to you for getting it!

The third question, but certainly not the least important, came from **Neitzarr **who asked me how I got into this. Honestly, this is one of those pieces that just came to me when I received the prompts. It almost wrote itself. But, I am, nonetheless, ridiculously proud of it. :)

Please feel free to ask any other questions you may have!

Thank you all very much for dealing with the obnoxiously long AN, and for reading, of course!

**disclaimer: **Not mine!

* * *

She ran.

Her light steps seemed to fall in time to rhythm of her breaths, and a part of her wished she'd had the foresight to leave her scarf home. It served only to weigh her down, and she had enough of those matters in the back of her head—she didn't see the need to wear them around her neck, too.

Running was how she escaped—her preferred method, before the arrival of those silly tomes, and the silly boy who seemed to come along with them. She brushed aside a twinge of something like guilt at the thought—_so much more than a silly boy_—and sped up resolutely, determined to ignore the dangerous direction her sentiments seemed to take.

It was stupid. _He_ was stupid. Love. What did he know? _Certainly not me_, Ino thought blankly, somewhat saddened at the thought. _If he had, he wouldn't have said a word. _

He _shouldn't_ have said a word. She'd been satisfied already. What need was there for more, she wondered. He couldn't possibly have—

He couldn't possibly have accepted reciprocation.

"Stupid," she gasped aloud, as she stopped to catch her breath. Her knees were shaking, and Ino knew it was only her pride that allowed her to blame it on the run.

"Stupid."

-

She hadn't returned his calls.

He'd left a message the day after, and another one three days later. When he'd heard her answering machine for the twenty-third time, Lee had wondered whether it was time to walk away.

He didn't regret it, or at least, he didn't think he did. There was no shame in honesty, and at least, she hadn't lied to him. There had been no dutiful reciprocation, no outright rejection. She'd only looked at him with those wide, blue eyes.

Lee was thankful for that—for her honesty. He liked to think that he knew a bit about Ino, and what he knew was that she was the sort who loved wholly and deeply. For her—as it was for him—it was all or nothing. He didn't think he would have been satisfied with only half a heart.

No—with Ino, it would be everything or nothing.

He would wait.

-

The days after had come and gone, and when she woke up on the following Wednesday, it was to the flashing LCD screen of her father's latest offering. Three more missed calls—Lee, it seemed, had remembered her preference for conversations at midnight.

Ino had done her very best to keep it out of her mind. And what was left to say, anyway? Surely he would have understood by now.

He wasn't in her plans—wasn't near what she'd expected, what she'd wanted, and she'd never been the sort of girl who liked surprises.

Love. Love. Love. Love.

The word was a metronome, a quiet beat that lingered long after she'd fallen asleep.

-

After today, he would step back, Lee decided, as he wrapped an ash-gray woolen scarf around his neck.

He would want her still, he knew. Lee knew himself—had tried, from the moment he learnt about the theory of self-serving bias to see himself objectively, to know himself the way others would see him from the outside. Heart, he knew, could not matter to those who did not—could not—see it.

But if he knew her—and he liked to think, that despite his self-made mess, that he did—adding to the feeling of her pushing him away would not help his cause.

Despite her disavowals to the contrary, Ino was a good person. She was imperfect and flawed, half-whole, and whole-hearted. And he knew what he was to her, knew that at the moment, all his calls were adding to the noose she'd hang around her neck.

Ino had a penchant for tragedy.

-

Sakura noticed it in first period, but mercifully, saved the inquisition for their shared free period. Sasuke was languishing in Theater_—"Need it for my scholarship,"_ he'd grumped earlier in the semester—and so, she had nothing to distract her from her best friend's sudden case of malaise.

"What's wrong with you," she asked bluntly. "I'm wearing a purple and orange scarf that clashes spectacularly with my hair and you haven't yet said a word. Did the Burberry boutique near your house close down," she asked playfully, though Ino noted the strain around her eyes. Sakura looked worried.

"Everything's just fine," she muttered, turning away to face the wall. "I just didn't get much sleep last night."

Sakura frowned for a moment, before her features softened into a look that seemed far too probing for her peace of mind.

She didn't want to talk about it, couldn't explain why she was suddenly feeling so undone in her own skin. Maybe she was being selfish. Maybe, she'd been fooling herself with the something more, with the something "better". Maybe she was self-centered and narcissistic, shallow and superficial—rife with artifice.

Maybe he'd been wrong, and maybe the mask she'd been wearing had taken, had pressed itself so cleanly against her skin that neither of them had noticed when it had become her face.

Maybe that was why she'd walked away. Too cowardly to face his disappointment, she'd elected to avoid it.

The thought seemed to linger on her tongue, surprising her with its bitterness.

She sat up, startling Sakura, who'd been eyeing her silence with worry.

"Ino…"

"Say there was a boy," Ino said, before she lost the nerve again. She ignored Sakura's sharp look. "Say there was a boy, and he loved you."

"I'll try to imagine that," her friend said wryly.

"Say there was a boy, and he loved you, but you knew that you were selfish, and wrong, and entirely unlike the person he's created in his mind. Say you aren't perfect—" Her words were coming faster now, almost stumbling over themselves to leave her mouth.

"This hypothetical situation is really doing a lot for my self-esteem, Ino."

"—but that he thinks that you are. Or that you're close to it. Or something. Say that you told him you were beautiful—someone else would have told him anyway—instead of waiting to hear the words coming from his own lips."

She was standing now, and attracting quite a bit of attention. Heads turned whenever Yamanaka Ino opened her mouth, but Sakura was almost entirely sure that for the first time, her best friend wasn't even aware of anyone else in the room. Her monologue might as well have been a soliloquy.

"Ino, where is this going? And you should sit—Ibiki-san's looking over here, and you know how he is about talking in his library." She punctuated her words with several sharp tugs at her friend's pale arm before Ino acquiesced, almost blindly.

"So you have a boy, and you know you aren't what he needs, and that he isn't what you need. Say that you know you'll hurt him."

Now, she broke off, looking at Sakura with wide eyes.

"So what do you say when he tells you he loves you?"

-

She called him from the courtyard, not three minutes after the last bell—low and dolorous; she'd never heard it before today, had never stayed long enough to listen—had sounded through the empty halls of her school. Despite herself, she'd memorized his schedule by heart, and knew he'd be in the coffee shop reading about torts and mandates and constitutional law. When it had been _theirs_, he'd read Plato and Aristotle, the odd Shakespeare_—"the everyman's poet," _he'd insisted, and had politely ignored her when she'd argued otherwise—and sometimes, de Tocqueville, whom he'd insisted was a combination of all three. He didn't care for Machiavelli—neither the man, nor his methods, and as his was the only name Ino was vaguely familiar with, so a lot of the time, they had been at an impasse.

Still, she thought now, as she stared blankly at the phone in the palm of her hand—the steady, unforgiving, beeping audible even from a distance—they had compromised.

Perhaps, she thought, it was over.

-

When he stepped out of the café, his breath seemed to form clouds in front of him, seemed to lead him instinctively to his next destination. His feet seemed to fall in time with his breaths—rhythmically, like a runner's—and he walked without thinking until he found himself near the river.

It wasn't as cold, he thought—not nearly so, even despite his breaths. He shifted the bag he carried so that the corners of his laptop weren't digging into his side, and exhaled deeply, closing his eyes to the scene before him.

Lee was away now, far enough that nothing could reach him. Civilization had no place here, or at least, it didn't rule. The closest buildings were blocks behind him, and a river away. His signal was nonexistent, and he'd left his car parked near the café, the keys safely ensconced in a pocket of his bag.

It was quiet here.

"Enough now," he said softly, willing his thoughts away. "Enough."

* * *

No, this isn't ending with a suicide. Absolutely not.

I'm thinking one more chapter.


End file.
